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Jets Talk About the Power of Belief

SAN DIEGO — Early Monday at the airport, the family of Jets running back Thomas Jones sat at Gate 39 in Terminal 2. Mere hours had passed since the Jets stunned the San Diego Chargers and advanced to the American Football Conference championship game, extending their fairy-tale season for at least another week.

The family patriarch, also Thomas, or Big Thomas to the Joneses, kept talking about will, conviction and belief. He kept returning to Rex Ryan, the coach whose embodiment of those traits have carried the Jets this deep into the postseason.

Big Thomas kept returning to the fourth quarter, fourth-and-1.

“That said something about Coach Ryan,” Big Thomas said. “That said something about the power of belief.”

One play summarized Ryan’s first season with the Jets, his first season as a head coach at any level. One play encapsulated Ryan’s style (brash, bold, daring) and his unwavering confidence (what his players describe as chutzpah).

The play: Jets ball; 1 minute 9 seconds remaining; fourth-and-1 from the Chargers’ 29. One play, Jones the son said afterward, 1 yard, with the A.F.C. championship game at stake.

The Chargers had just scored their second touchdown to cut the Jets’ advantage to 17-14. With an offense that is ranked among the most productive in football, the Chargers had plenty of time for another score. Most N.F.L. coaches would have kicked the field goal in Ryan’s situation, taken the 20-14 lead and held their breath.

But Ryan, as he has made abundantly clear this season, is not most coaches. He eschews the paranoid, mundane style copied across the league. Ryan talks, conducts interviews, gives impassioned pregame speeches and even eats with vigor. The next time he holds back will be the first.

Fullback Tony Richardson knew what the Jets would call on fourth-and-1. Everybody knew: the Jets, the Chargers, the television viewers, even the guy in the last row at Qualcomm Stadium. The Jets would hand the ball to Jones. Their offensive line, perhaps the best such unit in pro football, would push forward. Jones would follow.

The result would define not only the game but the season.

“That’s our play,” offensive tackle D’Brickashaw Ferguson said. “We’ve run it a million times. If you want to win, you make that call. If you really want the Super Bowl, you run that play. You gain that yard.”

Richardson said the Jets could not hear their quarterback, Mark Sanchez, in the huddle. It was that loud. It mattered little. Center Nick Mangold snapped the football, Sanchez handed it to Jones, and the running back plunged forward and gained 2 yards. Jones said in the locker room that a short gain never felt so good.

The Jets advanced to their fifth A.F.C. championship game, their first since 1998. They won two games in the same postseason for the first time since 1982 and only the third time in franchise history.

Photo

New York Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez celebrated after scoring a touchdown against the San Diego Chargers in the fourth quarter.Credit
Mike Blake/Reuters

As they celebrated in their cramped locker room, they kept returning to fourth-and-1. They did it because it secured the victory and their place in the final four, but also because it said something about Ryan, about the team’s changing culture and about these Jets.

Somewhere inside the stadium, Ryan stood at a lectern, a smile carved, perhaps permanently, across his face. Someone asked if he was surprised the Jets stood one victory from the Super Bowl, given his status as a first-year head coach, one with a rookie quarterback, no less.

“Not really,” Ryan said. “We believed the whole time, the whole year, when probably it wasn’t the popular choice, the popular opinion. But here we are. We don’t have to apologize to anybody.”

The seeds for fourth-and-1 were planted in January when Ryan wowed the Jets’ top officials, including Mike Tannenbaum, the team’s general manager, and Woody Johnson, the team’s owner, with a five-hour PowerPoint presentation. Ryan detailed his philosophy, his system, over those long hours, not a detail left to chance.

But beyond the X’s and O’s, beyond the way Ryan described even the way he would schedule the Jets’ travel, what stood out to Johnson was Ryan’s passion.

After the Jets lost six of seven games in one stretch this season, Ryan declared their season finished with two games left. The mistaken believed that Ryan had quit on his team. But that was far from the case.

Ryan had delivered bad, misinformed information. But his belief, what had prompted him to open his first news conference by saying the Jets would in his tenure visit President Obama as Super Bowl champions, never wavered.

The Jets embraced that style, even started boasting the way their coach did. Instead of at hello, Ryan had them at Super Bowl, which was among the first topics of his first meeting with the players. Linebacker Calvin Pace said that in the losing streak the Jets’ defense felt as if it had let Ryan down. The defense felt as if it owed him down the stretch.

Ryan had changed the culture with what he said, with the power behind his words. At times, it seemed as if he said the Jets had the best of everything: the best defense, the best fullback, the best nose tackle, and on down the line. The players sought to reach the expectations Ryan so publicly envisioned, and in doing so raised their play and won seven of their last eight games. They became the team that Ryan wanted all along.

“We talk about it all the time,” Richardson said. “This team is about belief. That starts with Rex.”

The Jets will play at Indianapolis on Sunday, and in their rematch with the Colts, they will be the underdogs once again. Yet, there at his locker Sunday night was wide receiver Braylon Edwards, who had never won a playoff game before this season.